Photographs have emerged of Sri Lankan military banners calling for unmarried Tamil women to join the army.

The banners, thought to have been photographed earlier this year, ask for Tamil women, aged between 18 and 24, with a height of at 5 ft 3 inches and offer a monthly salary of Rs 30,000.

The women would be joining nine brigades in the Mullaitivu district.

The two Indian Premier League matches that were due to be played on the 18th and 22nd of May have been moved out of Chennai, The New Indian Express reported.

Four Palestinians, who were detained at Katunayaka Airport, face being deported to a Syria refugee camp, reported Al Jazeera.

The men, who fled refugee camps in Syria, have been in detention in a military prison for the past four weeks and were treated inhumanely according to a Palestinian rights organisation.

"They were directly taken to the military prison, where they described the treatment as inhuman," spokesman for the Palestinian League for Human Rights – Syria, Salim Salamah, told Al Jazeera.

The Ministry of External Affairs played down comments made by Prime Minister Dm Jayaratne that Sri Lanka supports Vietnam in the ongoing dispute with China regarding maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Jayaratne, who was in Vietnam to celebrate the Buddhist Vesak festival, said that Sri Lanka supports Vietnam’s demand that China adhere to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and withdraw its drilling rig out of Viet Nam’s exclusive economic zone.

Tamil child awaits turn for a haircut by a Sri Lankan soldier (Pictures: SFHQ-E)

The Sri Lankan Army has held a “barber service” for Tamil students at a school in Kanchanakuda, Amparai, earlier this month, according to Security Forces Headquarters (East) website.

Members of the 12th Sri Lanka National Guard, who are under the command of the 23rd Division of the security forces, organised the service “for the development of child health care”, the website said.